Absolution
by Nastrandir
Summary: KOTOR: The Sithlords. For the second time, Malachor falls away behind her, and for the first time, her path is undecided.


_A quick foray into The Sithlords. While this was not properly planned as a companion piece to my KOTOR one-shot "Aftermath", it does in a way share similarities. As always, very little belongs to me and reviews and thoughts are always welcome.  
_

_**Absolution**_

She felt the tilt of the walkway beneath her feet, the low thrum of the engines beneath that. She waited, shoulders stiff and both hands flat against the wall. For long, impatient moments she lasted it out, the surge of the ship and the awareness of Malachor, falling away somewhere beneath them.

Falling _apart_, she thought, the high walls of the academy buckling into each other, the winding dark canyons wind-whipped and finally crumbling.

The crackle of the comm system broke into her thoughts, and she heard Atton snarl, "You're in?"

"I'm in." She pushed away from the wall. Her first step turned into half a stumble and she swore. "Let's go."

"On our way."

She crossed the last stretches of the walkway, her boots dragging and her tunic rank with the stink of blood and dust and stone. At her side, her lightsaber was as filthy, the hilt scuffed and slick and clipped haphazard to her belt. The ship canted, and when she clamped her hand against the hilt, Malachor swelled up in her mind.

_"Alright," she said, spitting the word out. "Tell me why I'm here. Tell me why it had to be _here_."_

_ Trim and poised and as maddeningly unperturbed as ever, Kreia said, "Because it began here. Because _you_ began here." _

_ "Darth Sion is dead. The Sith soldiers are dead. Were they his or yours?" _

_ Something like a smile twisted Kreia's mouth. "Does it matter, now?"_

_ "This academy is dead. There's nothing left." She pushed down the swirl of the anger, shoved it somewhere behind the staccato thud of her heartbeat. Briskly she gauged the distance across the glossy black stone to the high sweep of the pillars to Kreia's loose-limbed, practiced stance. _

_ No, she thought. Not Kreia, not entirely, not any more. Something else. Something made of the knowledge of betrayal, and endings, and the obstinacy that had kept her breathing and chasing the echoes of Malachor. _

_ Chasing the gaps in the Force where the emptiness lingered. _

_"You have carried it with you. Malachor. All that death. The absence of all those lives."_

_ Kreia's voice again, the words sinuous and heavy as the air, the air that pulsed with the memories trapped here, Malachor and the Sith and long years lost to wandering. _

_ "Enough," she said. She tightened her grip on her lightsaber. "You've got seconds to convince me not to slice you apart." _

_ Kreia laughed, the sound light and rattling beneath the stifling press of the shadows. "Indeed, exile?"_

_ "You killed the Council." _

_ "Yes." _

_ She flicked the lightsaber on, the blade buzzing fiercely blue. "It's over. It has to be."_

_ "And for that you would teach these companions of yours? For all your fleeing from the Jedi Order, for all that you fell away from them, is it not something very like it that you have sought so desperately to remake? Teaching them simple tricks and the means by which to live instants longer in a fight?" _

_ Five steps took her across the stone floor. The livid glow of the lightsaber cut the shadows, sent them wheeling. "You taught me," she snarled. "You guided me." _

_ "No. I spoke and you listened." _

_ "What's the difference?" _

_ "You." _

Around her, the _Ebon Hawk _eased, settling, softening. She cleared the next long stretch of corridor before turning left, taking herself into the bright confines of the medical bay. She found them half as she expected, Mical bustling between tables, his face pale and drawn and exhausted. She felt the clamour of it, of them, of how Malachor and the Sith had left them wrung through and wavering.

"Hey," Mira said, thickly. She was perched awkwardly, her shirt pushed back from her shoulder, the wound there ugly and leaking. "You're okay?"

"Okay," she said, nodding. She braced herself against the doorframe and added, "Anything I can do?"

"No. No, it's alright." Without glancing up, Mical said, "You're hurt?"

"I'm fine."

He shot her a glare. "Really?"

"Most of the blood on me isn't mine."

"Nice," Mira murmured.

"Let me know if you need anything."

"No more Sith?" Mira grinned tightly. "For now at least."

"I promise. For now."

In her quarters she stripped her tunic off, the folds of it grimy and slipping under her hands. The vest beneath was splotched with sweat, three inches of it sliced open above her hip, the skin there mottled with bruises. As brusquely, she splashed water through the mess of her hair, raked her fingers through afterwards and concluded there was little point trying to wrestle it into behaving anyway. She snapped her lightsaber back onto her belt and wondered how long it might take, how long until they could piece the ship back together, piece themselves back together.

She remembered how it had been, all those months ago, when she had woken with her mouth thick with the taste of kolto and the lingering ache in her side to prove why. Months while she had been hauled back into life and back into the shape she thought she had abandoned.

_"So what was it like?"_

_ "What?"_

_ "Okay, be cryptic," Atton said. "Pretending not to be a Jedi."_

_ "I wasn't pretending," she said, and bit back the urge to snap something vicious. "No name, nowhere to be. I guess you start losing yourself."_

_ "Yeah," he said, rougher. "I guess you do. You get lost anywhere I might know?"_

_ "Middle of nowhere and beyond that." _

_ "Sounds like my kind of place." _

_ She smiled, almost despite herself. "Did a few jobs. Security work, mostly."_

_ "Security," Atton echoed, deadpan. _

_ "Well. For a flexible definition of the word." _

She followed the corridor up to the cockpit and hesitated, one hand on the arch of the wall. For a long moment she simply stood, looking at him, at how his fingers danced across the console, how his shoulders were rigid, how she could feel the buried desperation in the way he was sitting.

"You know," Atton said, and twisted around in the pilot's chair. "You can stop lurking and say something."

Tiredly, she grinned. "View's good from here."

"Course it is."

"Course set?"

"Course set," he echoed, one side of his mouth sloping up.

She thought of it, the way they had circled each other in the early, wary days after Peragus, words and lies and half-truths flitting between them. When she had been flippant, and it had not quite worked, and she had heard the corrosive bite in her own words. When he had been sardonic, and even after half a bottle of spirits each, she had seen the shadows in his eyes. When they had argued, brisk and bruising and terribly _then_ she had heard the truth in her own voice and seen it in his face, bared. When slowly, afterwards, they had talked again, carefully and unevenly, as if they had remembered that words might be weapons after all.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"You mean will my hands actually stop shaking if I let go of the controls? Ask me again later."

She moved closer, feeling it between them, Malachor and the academy, and the odd, heavy awareness that it was finished.

"Can't believe we did it," Atton said. "Well. You did it."

"We did it."

His hands stiffened against the console. As jarringly, he pushed away from it, turning in the same motion. "I keep staring at it thinking it's going to change."

Before the words could desert her, she spoke. "I was scared. For you."

"Me?"

"For both of us."

"Well, there was that part where I got kicked in the teeth. And the face. And the gut, now I think of it." His smile returned, slightly edged. "That damn Sithlord packed a wallop."

"I think they're meant to."

"Caryn, I'm fine," he said. "Still not quite sure how we're still standing. That's all."

"_So this thing you've got going on with Kreia."  
_

_"Could you make that sound any more filthy?"_

_ "I could try, though I'm really hoping she's not your type." _

_ She snorted. "And what you're really trying to ask, is..?"_

_ Atton slouched back in the pilot's chair. His gaze skipped over the constellation charts and back to the main controls. "What does it mean?"_

_ She shrugged, as if the answer was easy, or simple, or inconsequential. "It's a sort of – link, I guess. Shared thoughts. Emotions. It can be controlled, closed off or opened. Made stronger or weaker." _

_ "I'm not sure if that sounds great or just plain terrifying." _

"So tell me. How'd it feel?"

"Like I'm still waiting to react," she answered. "One more fight that wasn't just one more fight."

"You wanted one of those, you should've stuck around after we got rid of the big scary guy."

"You did fine," she told him lightly.

"Tell that to my shoulder. I didn't know it could move like that until Darth Sion ran into it at full tilt." He tipped his head to one side. "You're closing yourself out on me."

"No, it's not that," she said, and stopped. So easy, she thought, so absurdly easy to fall back into it, words flung up between them, barriers that were just as flat and windowless as the way he had once caged off his thoughts. "You're right. It was Malachor. It was Kreia and she was right there in my head. Didn't matter what I did. Like she knew what I was going to say before I did."

"She always was good at that."

"Which is why I shouldn't have been surprised. Shocked. Angry." She scrubbed a hand across the back of her neck. "Whichever one."

"Can't second guess everything, you know."

"Can certainly try," she retorted.

The silence crawled back, and she wished she could slough it off, conjure words or a bad joke or something, _anything_ else.

Atton moved first, hauling himself out of the chair. As gracelessly, he heaved himself up onto the side console, his boots flat on the floor.

"You dent it, you're mending it," she said mildly.

"Right now, the whole ship is one big dent."

"We'll get it patched up. We always do."

_Dxun was damp, the air heavy with it, the trees gleaming wet and green. Caryn was half slouching against the slant of a boulder, glowering at the faint misting rain that shrouded the knotted arches of the forest above. She'd shed the long heavy robe hours ago, the hem of it already dripping. She cupped her hands together and watched the tiny droplets catch against her skin. _

_"Hey," Atton said. Another step took him wading through the thick sodden grass. "You okay?" _

_"Yes." _

_ "Look, I know we're getting nowhere fast. I know how that feels." _

_ She heard herself snap, "You do, do you?" _

_ "Yeah," he answered fiercely. _

_ She shoved upright,_ _another retort a breath away. Viciously she shoved the anger back, the slow sapping surge of it. "Unless you have a glowing and infallible plan to get me back down on the surface of that planet, you can take yourself back to the ship and find another way to be useful." _

_ For a long moment he stood as if he was wrestling with it, with what he wanted to say or what he should say. "I'll come tell you when we're finished with it, then?" _

_ "Look, Atton," she said. _

_ "Forget it," he answered, and the walls were back in his eyes. "Later." _

She settled herself on the console beside him and slowly, almost awkwardly, she let herself become aware of him. The way his boots were horribly scuffed, and how he kept plucking at the lightsaber at his belt. How he still carted his blasters around regardless, because she'd asked once and he'd joked – _and it wasn't a joke, not really, because of the way he'd said it and she'd understood – _that his blasters might as well have been welded to his palms for how used he was to them.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked.

"Sure," Atton said. "Unless it's about pointing the ship somewhere other than the nearest bar. In that case, no. And yes, you're buying, if you were wondering."

"Didn't I buy last time?"

"Maybe."

"And wasn't it because you dropped a heap of credits on a game that went nowhere?"

"You wound me with your words."

"With the accuracy of them, perhaps." She hesitated, staring down at her hands, linked across her knees. "This isn't going to change. There are still Sith out there. Their supporters."

"That's not a question, you know."

"I know."

"And you really should let the rest of us have at least half a day off before thinking about anything else."

"The rest of us?"

"Well," he said, and grinned crookedly. "Me."

"You know what I thought," she said slowly. "When we got back to Dantooine?"

"You're talking about the Council."

"Yes." The Council, the fragments that were left of them, stretched out and boneless on the dry grass, as empty as anything else in the ruins. "I knew. No – that's not right. I should have known. I felt it and chose not to believe it."

Wryly, he said, "I'm pretty sure we had a lot going on that day. Those few days."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is?" he asked, sharper. "That Kreia fooled you? Fooled us? That we let her fool us?"

"I don't know. What do you want me to say?"

"That this might be one of the most absurd fights we've ever had?"

Abruptly she laughed, the relief sudden and warm and uncoiling through her. "I think you might be right. Start over?"

"Well," Atton said. "If we're doing that, then I don't know about you, but I've had a really interesting day."

She shifted, easing closer, close enough that her shoulder brushed his. "You're not the only one."

_The lightsaber lay on the bench, silent and deactivated. Cold when she ran her thoughts along the hilt, when she listened to the hum of the crystal inside it, when she felt her own work in it, in how she'd cobbled it together, pieces of places she'd forgotten, memories she thought she'd banished. _

_For a brief, wrenching instant, she did not want to touch it. She wanted to walk away from it, from the echoes of it, the council chamber so long ago and the way they had looked at her, statue-still and wordless. _

_ "Stupid," she growled at herself and locked both hands around the hilt. _

_ Slim and light and when she pried one hand away, she found herself shaking slightly. Slowly and carefully she settled herself, one steely nerve at a time. A heartbeat later, the blade hummed into life. The shadows leapt away and she stared at it, unwavering and blue and hers. _

_ "So," Atton said, from somewhere behind her. "You sliced the wall apart yet?"_

_ "Accidentally or otherwise?"_

_ "Either will do." He moved, his boots snapping hard against the floor. Deliberately, she was sure, since he always walked so very carefully, every footstep measured and coiled and deceptively light. _

_ She turned, the lightsaber still clasped loosely in one hand. She saw his gaze flick to it, heavy-lidded and dark. _

_ "Pretty," Atton said, and grinned. _

_ "You're skewering my big moment here, you know."_

_ "You were doing fine on your own."_

_ Sharply, she scrutinized him, the crooked tilt of his mouth and the way his voice had been strangely soft. _

_ Eventually, she said, "Thanks."_

_ "For what?"_

_ "Interrupting." _

_ "Well," he said. His gaze locked on hers, unwavering. "I am occasionally good at that. Among other things."_

"I thought it through," Atton said. "What I thought I'd do when we got to Malachor. What I wanted to do."

"And?"

"And mostly I just ran around trying to keep breathing."

"Same as most fights."

"No," he said, his voice roughening. "This wasn't."

"No. I know."

"I thought about what you'd said. When we talked about it, what you'd done. What you knew."

"What I didn't know," she said drily.

He turned slightly, his shoulder curving against hers. "This is the part where you make me admit again that you're not too bad with that shiny Jedi weapon you wave around too much?"

"I don't wave it around."

"You do," he said, and nudged her gently. "It's still okay. I asked, didn't I?"

_"You're certain about this?"_

_ "Can't you tell?" he responded, almost sardonic._

_ "This is serious."_

_ "I know."_

_ "No," she said. "Atton, I'm not sure you do. These connections, these bonds, whatever we're going to call them. I'm not even sure what they mean. Not yet."_

_ "So we're running blind. What's new?"_

_ "So we both need to be careful about this."_

_ "And right there that sounds like a ringing endorsement for the Jedi Order." Crookedly, he grinned, but the sting was absent from his voice, and for a brief, wavering moment, she was almost certain that she could read fear in his face. _

_ "So," he said, when she stayed silent. "How do we do this?"_

_ Very gently, Caryn said, "Your thoughts. The way you – the way you think. The way you're careful. You're going to have to start to let me in."_

_ "Okay, but I…"_

_ "I know." _

_ "No," he replied, and his smile trembled. "I'm not sure you do." _

_ Wordless, she sat and waited, aware of the slow thump of her own pulse, the rhythm of her breathing and the rougher tempo of his. Around them, the cabin walls thrummed, the engines and footfalls against the catwalk outside and the clamour of the others. She could feel him where he sat opposite her, legs crossed and grimy white shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows. _

_ Hands on his knees and then twisting because he did not know what else to do with them. Hands turning, pressing against other before he slapped them back down onto his knees again. She felt the coiled, terse awareness that part of him wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else, anything to calm the skittering way his nerves were jangling. The way stillness in combat came simply, because it was a trick, a mask, an illusion. The way this stillness here, between them, was something he had to wrestle with, a creature that had its hooks under his skin. _

_ She felt it when he let go finally, tentatively, the cage around his thoughts buckling. _

_ "Caryn," Atton murmured. "Still here?" _

_ She closed her hands over the back of his, feeling the steely tension in him. "Still here." _

_"Is this," he said, and stopped. _

_ "It's alright. Atton. You're with me. It's alright." _

_ He stayed there, rigid and uncertain, eyes clamped shut. This close, she could see the faint white scar that crossed his temple and disappeared under the rumpled mess of his hair. _

_She felt the jolt of it when he opened his eyes. _

"_Is this," he said again, and frowned. "I don't even know what I want to say." _

_ "Speechless, you?"_

_ "Don't get used to it." _

_ "Wouldn't dream of it," she said, and when he smiled, something eased inside her. _

_For long moments he was motionless, his gaze on their hands as if the desperate, locking pressure of her fingers over his might anchor them together. _

"_Okay," Atton said. "What next?" _

The navigation screen flared, bright points of light that circled and settled. She remembered the rest of it, how she had seen the past in him and walked it, the buried past, all the deaths that had led him to Nar Shaddaa. How she had laid her memories out in turn, the war and the brisk single word, her word – _proceed_ – that had cracked Malachor open and gouged out an absence where the Force used to be.

"Hey," Atton said, tipping the side of his head against hers. "I can hear your thoughts rattling around from here."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Just don't do it."

She found herself laughing, awkwardly and almost aching. "That easily?"

"I can distract you, if you like."

"I'm floored by your generosity."

"Talk to me," he said.

Bluntly, she answered, "I'm trying to work out when I started tricking myself."

"About Kreia?"

"I let her into my head and I wanted to believe that she was teaching me to – well, to teach me. To bring me back. To myself. To guide me."

"She looked for you."

"She did," she said, nodding. "She got us off Peragus. _She_ kept us alive."

"Kept you alive," he retorted. "I was just along for the ride and managed to somehow keep breathing."

"Could've left you there," she told him archly.

"Between the Sith soldiers and the fact that I'm still surprised we didn't lose the ship and our own skins in a giant fireball?" Lazily, he grinned. "Maybe you should've."

"You'd've been bored."

"Also likely dead by now."

"Good point." She stared at his hands where they'd finally settled over his knees, fine-boned and the knuckles webbed with old scars. "It's stupid. I've spent so many damn years keeping my thoughts locked up. Keeping myself alive. And then Kreia just walked into my head like I'd left her an invitation."

"You weren't the only one."

"No, but," she said and scowled. "I don't know. Some of what she said – some of what she taught me – it worked. It was strong, and right."

"And the rest of it was utterly insane."

Despite herself, she laughed again. "Well, when you put it like that."

"I get it," Atton said haltingly. "I get chasing yourself in circles around this. But, you know, you did a lot of this. Got us all across the galaxy and back. Got us all working together."

"And then because I worked so hard at finding the Council, she knew where they'd be. I laid them out for her. Led them there and let her have them."

"You didn't know."

"I should have known."

"You finished tearing yourself down yet?" he demanded, sharper.

"That's not what I," she snapped, and paused. "Fine. Yes."

"You never told me if _you_ were okay."

Unbidden, Caryn smiled. "Can't you tell?" she asked, teasingly, the words soft.

"Well, yeah. I think so. I mean, I think I can feel that you're okay. I'm just still kind of new to this, remember? And with everything that happened down there," he said, his voice fading.

"Hey," she said. "It's okay. We're here."

_She surfaced from blanketing grey dreams. She tried to roll over and winced when something in her side twinged. _

_ "Hey," someone said. "You still there?"_

_ "Mmm," she managed. Cautiously, she cracked her eyes open and squinted up at blank whiteness that eventually resolved into the medbay ceiling. _

_ "You went down like a sack of shit." _

_ "Right now I feel like a sack of shit." As gingerly, she reached out, discovering the edge of crisp sheets. "Atton?" _

_ "Still here," he answered, and she thought his voice sounded rougher somehow, tired. _

_ "You're okay?"_

_ "You're asking _me_ that?" he responded. _

_ She heard him chuckle, and then she was aware that he was moving, sitting on the end of the bed. She felt his weight settle before he said, "I'm okay. May have strained something dragging you back to the ship." _

_ "_Dragging_ me?" she protested. _

_ "Well. Carrying. Apparently you're not meant to drag someone who's been injured." _

_ "Am I allowed to move?" _

_ "Never," he said, deadpan. _

_ "Very funny." Slowly, she eased herself upright until she was sitting properly, arms locked around her knees. "Not sure whether I should feel angry or embarrassed." _

_ "Well, the bastards that jumped us are now decorating the alleyway where they jumped us, so maybe you can skip the embarrassed part. They won't be telling anyone anything any time soon." _

_ "Hah." _

_ "Hey, look," he said. His head lifted, dark eyes flickering. "Just wanted to make sure you're, you know, still breathing."_

_ "Still breathing," she said mildly. _

_ "So, yeah. I'll leave you alone?" _

_ She found herself smiling. "No?" _

_ "Okay," he said, and grinned crookedly. "I can do that."_

_ Almost absently, she pushed the sheets away. She was in loose shorts and a sleeveless vest and she could see new scrapes down the side of one leg, wrapping around her shin. "How did I get those?" _

_ "You're asking me? I'm not the one who falls off things all the time." _

_ "I don't fall off things all the time."_

_ "Some of the time." Atton shoved a hand through his hair. "So, look."_

_ "Just say it," she told him wryly. "You've got that look."_

_ "What look?"_

_ "The 'I don't know how to say it, so you say it for me', look." _

_ "I don't do that look." He threw her a glare, brief and with little sting. "When you got shot, I felt it." _

_ The words sawed between them, faltering and uncertain. _

_ "We talked about it," Caryn said. "The training. It does mean that you'll become more aware of things around you." _

_ "There's things and then there's feeling something like that." _

_ "I'm sorry," she said, before she could think better of it. _

_ "That's not what I meant. I just meant," he said and shrugged. "Actually I don't know what I meant." _

_ "I'll show you how to keep it to the edge of your awareness. How to manage it."_

_ "No," he said, and exhaled sharply. "That's not what I meant. Not at all. I was just – shocked, I guess."_

_ "You?"_

_ "Yeah, yeah. Keep laughing." _

_ Awkwardly, she moved, slinging her legs over the side of the bed until they were beside his, his boots flat on the floor and her bare feet an inch or two shy of it. She leaned her head against his shoulder and felt it when the tension finally seeped out of him. _

_ "You know," Atton murmured. "You actually had me worried there." _

_ "Really?" _

_ "Yeah. Without you, I'd be the only sane person on this whole ship." _

_ "Sure you would." She laughed, the sound of it catching in her throat. As haltingly, she breathed him in, clean skin and the tickling brush of his hair against her forehead. "That feels better. Feels good." _

_ "Oh?" His voice turned teasing. "What does?" _

_ "You do." She turned her head too fast, grimacing when her nose bumped his. "Sorry." _

_ "Don't worry. I'm just about to think up some awful joke about the maddening grace of a Jedi." _

_ "Charming." _

_ "Hey, look," Atton said. _

_ "Yeah," she said, and before she could think better of it, she turned again, her lips brushing his. _

_ His hands caught at the back of her head and he held her there, frantic, the responsive movement of his mouth fierce and insistent. The heat of it startled her, the clinging desperation of it, of him and of her. _

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," she answered.

"Not sure you're going to like answering it."

"Then no, you cannot install a drinks cabinet in here. You can walk to the galley like everyone else."

"You remember the _Ravager_?"

"You're right. I'm not going to like it, am I?"

Atton grinned. "You know much I like it when you do my stalling for me." He hesitated through another heartbeat, and another, before he said, "I remember what you said. About him. It. Whatever he was."

Darth Nihilus, she thought, and the recollection jolted her. Hunger, and nothing else, hunger that locked together the pieces that once had been a man. How finally he had fallen, split open beneath the whipping arc of her lightsaber, as if the blade had parted nothing but smoke.

"Something made full that keeps emptying and emptying," she said.

"Yeah, that was the incredibly creepy way you put it." Ruefully, he added, "Look, I don't know where I'm going with this. I know we blew his ship up into many satisfyingly tiny pieces, and I know we just did the same thing to Malachor."

"You mean, will there be others?"

"I guess. Or could there be?"

"You going to run away screaming if I say yes?"

"After everything else you've dragged me through?" He touched the side of her arm. "Doubtful."

"Of course there could be," she said. "Just like him? I don't know. We run from one side of the galaxy to the other, tearing it apart while we go. There'll be others."

"We?"

"Jedi. Sith. Anyone who knows which way round to hold a blaster."

"That's a cheerful outlook. Can't we at least celebrate surviving today before shining a light on all sorts of awful truths?"

"Of course we can." She tilted her head up so she could look at him, so she could search the pale angles of his face. "Atton. Why ask that now? About Nihilus, I mean."

"I guess after the _Ravager_ went up in flames, there wasn't much time to be thinking of much else. And," he said, his eyes flickering. "I guess I was thinking about what Vrook said. Remember?"

_ What you carry may mean the death of the Force. _

_ You are a breach that must be closed._

"Yes," she said, the word catching in her throat, thick and heavy. "Not the nicest thing to hear first thing in the morning, as I recall."

"Or any time in the morning."

"True."

"So Malachor – what we did – that changed it?"

There was a slow, yearning note in his voice that made her ache. "Yes," Caryn said. "I think so."

"You think so?" he repeated, and grinned crookedly. "You're so comforting."

"Very funny." She turned, lifting her legs up in the same motion and slinging them over his so that she was almost sitting across him. "Tired?"

"Should be. Then I think about closing my eyes and trying to sleep and I know all I'll see will be Darth Sion. Or something worse."

"There's something worse?"

"Probably. So," he said, and crossed his arms over her knees. "Stay here?"

"Staying here."

_Desperately, roughly, they were on each other, his hands finding her belt and hers shoving sharply at his jacket. She kissed him again, greedy and frantic, her teeth clicking against his. She twisted, pulling him away from the wall until they ended up on the floor, tangled, her hands braced flat against Atton's chest and her thoughts flying apart. She urged him over her, closer, the unfamiliarity of it shattering her. _

_Afterwards, it was slower. _

_Afterwards, he stayed there braced above her. She traced the sharp slant of his cheekbones, the damp dark ends of his hair. He murmured something against the corner of her mouth, and she turned, breathing him in. For long moments she let herself lie there, aware of the heat in his skin, in the way his body was mapped along hers. _

_ "Hey," Atton said, very quietly. _

_ "Hey yourself." _

_ "Can I confess something?"_

_ "What?"_

_ "My arms are getting tired."_

_ She laughed, the sound of it more like a sigh. Gently, she drew him down so that they were wrapped around each other, her face pressed against the crook of his shoulder. She found scars on him, tracking between his shoulderblades, lacing along his thigh, lining the arc of one rib. She felt the echoes of them, the buried pain, and when he told her how they'd happened – blaster fire, burn, old-fashioned combat knife, a bad fall, a stupid drunken moment – she found herself asking for more, for the stories there, and then for the truth beneath the stories. Afterwards she did the same while his hands skimmed over that dreadful ditch of a scar on her leg – that one'd landed her in kolto for too long – and the others, some of them half-forgotten, the path of the years on her skin. _

_ "I'd've run the bastard through," Atton protested. _

_ "Really? Lightsaber kicked out of your hand, backed in a corner?" _

_ "After I got the lightsaber back."_

_ "It's too easy to critique afterwards." _

_ "True," he said, and dipped his head close enough that she could kiss him again, lazy and pliant. "This one?" _

_ His fingers slid along the long, swooping mark that descended past her hips, and she explained, "Oh, that? That one's a training scar."_

_ "What kind of training? How to fall off things the worst way possible?"_

_ "Close," she said. "Vibroblades. I was young, and arrogant, and turned too fast too many times."_

_ "They didn't heal you up?"_

_ "I, well. Don't laugh."_

_ Atton grinned. "Now that you've said that?" _

_ "I thought I was being very tough and declared that I didn't need any."  
_

_"You're a Jedi. Jedi are crazy."_

_ "Thanks," she said, and mustered up half a glare. _

She remembered the slow silence when she hadn't asked if he wanted to go, when he hadn't asked either. When they'd fumbled through dressing each other afterwards, stumbling over the sudden complexities of buttons and buckles. She'd suspected that she was not particularly good at it, whatever it was, that halting closeness, and that when words were stripped away, neither was he.

The slight brush of Atton's hands against the side of her leg made her blink, shaking her thoughts aside.

"You reckon she'd've done it?"

Caryn shook her head. "Who'd've done what?"

"Kreia. All that about using the Force like a poison, to kill it."

"She wanted it ended, and she spent so long trying," she said, and swallowed. "Still not sure if that's dedication or obstinacy."

"Insanity, I'd call it. Or lack of a decent other hobby."

She smiled. She inched closer, close enough that she could lean her forehead against his shoulder.

"Hey," Atton said. "_Are_ you okay?"

She felt the questing slide of his hands, and then he was urging her head up, his fingers beneath her chin.

"I'll get there," she answered. She turned her face into the rough warmth of his palm. "Stupid. Malachor's been sitting inside me for years. Now it's gone, and I can't seem to just let it all go."

"It will. Eventually, when we're away from it. When you've thought it through slowly."

She peered at him. "I'm impressed. I guess you did listen to some of the things I said after all."

"That's what I'm here for, to constantly surprise you." He hesitated, tracing the slope of her throat, finding the ragged thump of her pulse. "On Malachor. I, ah. I saw you walk away from me and after Kreia and I thought maybe I'd never see you again."

"Atton, I don't…"

"No, just wait. I didn't mean – it wasn't the thought of you losing a fight to her. Wasn't that at all. I was thinking that maybe you'd come back out, and it wouldn't be you, not really. It'd be something she'd done to you. To change you."

"But?" she asked, very gently.

"But then I told my mind to keep its ideas to itself and went about the business of the day. Which happened to include lots of running away from the bad guys, lots of sweating, and lots of swearing."

"Fairly typical," she said.

"Only around you."

"Sounds like a complaint."

"The opposite, I promise."

She remembered it, the walls of the academy rippling with it, the soft slow breathing of the Dark Side. How she had walked through it and felt it seep into her skin and under it, whispering. How she had driven it back with the cold clarity of desperation and forced herself to stop and to wrest it further away. How frantically she had reached for some tiny fragment of peace, for the small patience of a steadily drawn breath against the press of the shadows.

She said, "I don't think you were the only one wondering that."

"I felt it on Korriban," he said, his eyes clouding with it, the ghosts and the murmuring disquiet they had found there. "I guess I thought it was going to be the same. Or something. I don't know."

"I didn't think," she said, and stopped.

"What?"

"What you'd want to do. Afterwards."

He hesitated. "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. There were a few days when thinking past getting this done just made my brain hurt."

"That's just it. It isn't done. There'll always be something else."

"There you go," Atton muttered. "Being all optimistic again."

Caryn laughed, the sound of it muffled against his neck when he hauled her closer. She heard the silence as it folded around him, around them both, easy and unhurried. She heard it as his thoughts settled, quieting. She wondered if he could hear hers, strung somewhere between uncertainty and the strange awareness of hope.

"Well," Atton said. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, following the faint crescent of the scar there. "Not like we've relied upon having a solid plan before."

"You say that like it's a positive thing."

"Look at it this way. You think I would've agreed to half the stuff you made me go through if I'd've known about it ahead of time?"

"Well," she said. "What if I'd persuaded you very nicely?"

"That might've worked."

She closed her eyes and felt him smile against her hair. Stillness returned, uncomplicated and simple. "So," she said, and let her eyes open.

"So," Atton said, and she felt the shuddering rush of his breath against her lips. "You'll be wanting some company, then?"

_End_


End file.
